5 Attachment(s)
Tachiyomi Manga Reader: Threats Motivate Pirates & Boost Engagement
On January 2, contributors to the open source Tachiyomi manga reader project received legal threats from Kakao Entertainment. The orders were clear: destroy the project and ensure the deletion of all forks. The events of the next 10 days show that by selecting the 'wrong' target, freshly motivated pirates boost their engagement and content-neutral apps like Tachiyomi reap the benefits.
For those not fully engaged in the global manga/webtoon phenomenon, the scale and depth can be a little bewildering.
Fans are knowledgeable, passionate, and growing in numbers, with many older enthusiasts having been introduced to the content via pirate sites, at a time when content was impossible to buy legally.
Availability is much improved today but old habits die hard; pirate sites haven’t gone away either, a major challenge for content owners everywhere, in every content category.
One of the companies attempting to reduce piracy of its ‘webtoon’ content is South Korea-based Kakao Entertainment. Unlike other large copyright holders that have coupled strong anti-piracy responses with generally moderate public profiles, Kakao prefers a different approach. The company’s anti-piracy team constantly engages with the public on social media, often with controversial results.
Of course, Kakao is entitled to these freedoms. The company owns the content it seeks to protect and since almost all anti-piracy strategies fail to a greater or lesser extent, trying something different could inject new life and lead to fresh ideas.
That being said, the history books show that some scenarios should be approached with caution; when certain ingredients are combined, there’s a heightened risk of unpredictable results.
Open Source Manga Reader ‘Tachiyomi’ Receives Legal Threats
For the last ten days or so, open source software ‘Tachiyomi’ has found itself under the spotlight following an approach by Kakao’s anti-piracy team. But first, what does the software do? A manga aficionado familiar with the software informed TorrentFreak as follows:
“Tachiyomi is probably the ultimate Android-based manga/webtoon reader with plenty of features and extensibility. The development team behind it has been hard at work for close to 9 years since 2015, and has tirelessly iterated upon it, to create possibly the best kind of reader there is today.”
Tachiyomi is free to use, with the added bonus of being completely open source. In common with similar tools, such as web browsers or torrent clients, Tachiyomi contains no third-party content and makes no attempt to lock users into specific sources.
However, through various extensions, users are free to choose their own, including unofficial sources from where it’s possible to download content, including pirated content, without ever paying a penny.
We’re informed that on January 2, 2024, project contributors received communication from Kakao’s representatives who made several demands in respect of this functionality.
A source familiar with events informs TorrentFreak that the main developer of Tachiyomi was instructed to terminate the nine-year-old project by deleting all versions of the app, including those on GitHub.
He was further ordered to delete any comics uploaded to the app, despite the app carrying no third-party content, period. A further demand sought the immediate removal of all Tachiyomi forks on GitHub.
Tachiyomi Begins Removing Extensions
We understand that later on January 2, Tachiyomi’s main developer advised Kakao that the best way to take actual content down would be to file DMCA notices at problematic sites, over which the project has no control. He also offered to help, advising the company that he was willing to remove individual sources from Tachiyomi’s separate extension repo if those were considered an issue.
Three days later, Kakao reportedly presented a spreadsheet that listed allegedly infringing content available from five third-party sites. For one of those sites, Tachiyomi had no extension; for the remaining four, the Tachiyomi team would soon take appropriate action.
New versions of Tachiyomi were released between January 6 and January 8 without a list of extensions being preloaded. Moving forward, those who download Tachiyomi will find that extensions are no longer part of the ‘out-of-the-box’ experience.
January 9: Official Announcement
An announcement on tachiyomi.org dated January 9 spoke of “extenuating circumstances” and a decision to purge extensions to “ensure the long-term sustainability of Tachiyomi.”
“As of now, Tachiyomi is transitioning to a fully bring-your-own-content model. What this means is that you can still enjoy Tachiyomi for manga reading, but you’ll need to source and add your own content,” the statement added.
24 Hours Earlier
As detailed above, the Tachiyomi team responded to Kakao’s complaints quickly and went on to take significant action. Arguably the new versions of the app could’ve been pushed even sooner absent a 48-hour delay to determine certain details.
However, what appeared to be an amicable solution triggered an unexpected Twitter post by Kakao’s anti-piracy team. It implied that installing Tachiyomi carries a risk of viruses.
